The collection of Spanish Contemporary Art

Through a small but significant group
of carefully chosen works—primarily
paintings and sculptures—the Museu
Fundación Juan March aims to present
the main trends and artists within
twentieth-century Spanish art, with
a particular focus on recent decades.

Inevitably, this brief introductory
text cannot refer to every work
and each artist, group or tendency
represented in the collection, due
to its richness and variety, and also
because many of these artists defy
rigid categorization due to their
highly individual output. Nonetheless,
through their works, each and every
one of them has contributed in defining
the current state of art in Spain.

Colección de arte abstracto - Museu de Palma

Inevitably, this brief introductory
text cannot refer to every work
and each artist, group or tendency
represented in the collection, due
to its richness and variety, and also
because many of these artists defy
rigid categorization due to their
highly individual output. Nonetheless,
through their works, each and every
one of them has contributed in defining
the current state of art in Spain.

As such, the collection shows
how the twentieth century was
defined by the formal and stylistic
discoveries made by a series of artists
who coincided in Paris, the capital
of modern art until at least the midtwentieth
century. Names such as
Juan Gris, Julio González, Joan Miró,
Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso—all
represented in the museum—have
become universally known as the
creative figures who led the break
from tradition brought about by the
early avant-garde movements.

It was in the second half of the
twentieth century that Spanish modern
art grew and evolved through the
emergence of aesthetic trends such as
informalism, geometrical abstraction
and magic realism, which assumed a
course that ran parallel to international
visual art movements, but which
possessed its own distinctive character
and expressivity. One of the connecting
links within this new artistic dynamism
of the 1950s and 1960s was Fernando
Zóbel, who founded the Museo de
Arte Abstracto Español in Cuenca
in 1966 with the collaboration of
Gustavo Torner and Gerardo Rueda.
This institution would become the
key reference point of contemporary
art for both the visiting public and
Spanish artists until the founding of
the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte
Reina Sofía in Madrid in the 1980s.

The Museo de Arte Abstracto
Español is also managed by the
Fundación Juan March, which received
Zóbel’s endowment and expanded
it from 1980 onwards. Thus, the
Cuenca museum can be seen as an
"brother" to Palma’s Museu
Fundación Juan March—it was the
starting point for its collection, from
which an independent museological
plan has evolved at its own pace,
reflecting the particular characteristics
of Palma’s museum.

Colección de arte abstracto - Museu de Palma

Displayed side by side in the Museu
Fundación Juan March’s exhibition
halls are works by the artists who
shared the spirit of those decades,
giving rise to a fascinating network
of mutual influences. Within the
context of informalism, for example,
Antoni Tàpies’ calm, material-based
abstraction is juxtaposed with the cry
for freedom best expressed in works
by Antonio Saura, Rafael Canogar,
Manuel Millares or Luis Feito, all of
whom updated the most characteristic
traits of the Spanish cultural tradition
through expressivity and emotion.

Tàpies’ presence is particularly notable
in the museum due to the quality and
quantity of his works on display. An
internationally renowned artist, Tàpies
turned the wall—his preferred theme—
into an enormously evocative surface.
His investigations of specifically
painterly elements also enabled him
to transcend traditional pictorial
illusionism, while his interest in the
everyday, the insignificant and the
tangible reality of objects brought
him close to Zen philosophy and
the aesthetics of contemplation.

Special mention should also be
made of the Basque sculptors Jorge
Oteiza and Eduardo Chillida, who
are significantly represented in the
museum and who formulated their
own distinctive idioms in the 1950s,
as did Tàpies and Pablo Palazuelo.
The latter is a unique artist whose
work, dominated by a lyrical and
transcendental understanding
of geometrical and rhythmical
values, is difficult to classify and
cannot easily be located within the
context of analytical abstraction.

With the intention of rethinking
Basque art and sculpture through
an affirmation of its identity, Oteiza
systematically investigated the void,
on occasions exploring its expressive
capacity and on others avoiding any
type of symbolism in order to focus
on the geometry of the volume that
defines it.

On the other hand, Chillida,
whose work was characterized by an
equally profound asceticism, meditated
on space, working directly with iron
and the technique of forging in order
to convey the intensity and tension
of a direct blow applied with the full
weight of the body. Moving between
classicism and primitivism, Chillida’s
work reveals his interest in nature and
in man’s ability to transform it into art.

Characterized by its dense,
disturbing mood, the art of Lucio
Muñoz, who worked with wood to
create his expressionist pieces, also
reflects this intention to reinvigorate
the Spanish cultural tradition.
This is also the case, albeit from a
realist viewpoint, with the work
of Antonio López García and Julio
López Hernández, both of whom
have produced figurative works
of an enigmatic, even hermetic,
symbolism that associates them
with the tradition of magical realism.
Another very different connection
to tradition was established by José
Guerrero, an artist whose entire
career falls within the conte xt of
American abstract expressionism and
who investigated the limits of color
and its vibrations while continuing
to evoke a certain Spanish mood.

Finally, a conscious opposition to
informalism defines the work of artists
such as Eusebio Sempere and Andreu
Alfaro, who were active during the
years when international geometrical
abstraction prevailed but who set
out to produce a type of abstract art
based on the experimental tradition
of the constructivist avant-gardes.
Sempere’s work is based on geometrical
analysis, as can be appreciated in his
paintings, silkscreens and sculpture.
Alfaro, on the other hand, drew
on the air with iron and stainless
steel, searching for a simplicity and
precision that retain an element of
symbolism. As a result we could say
these two artists represent the opposing
extreme of abstraction in Spain.

Within the context of a reinvigorated
figuration that allied itself with popular
culture and that contained a degree
of social critique, Eduardo Arroyo,
Juan Genovés and Equipo Crónica
constructed narratives referring
to individual or group experiences
that were often related to pop art in
the visual devices they employed.

Decades of ebullient creative
activity gave rise to a type of
contemporary Spanish art
characterized by its avoidance
of dogma and the coexistence of
extremely varied artistic trends. A
succession of artists thus investigated
the limits of art, generating new
languages. The early 1970s saw an
initial opening up to Europe and the
acceptance of the most cutting-edge
tendencies within minimalism and,
particularly, conceptual art. Spanish
art was now fully open to experimental
trends of a different type, which
shared the characteristic of not being
expressed through the traditional
media of painting and sculpture.

Colección de arte abstracto - Museu de Palma

Opposing those approaches, artists
working in the 1980s set out to regain
ground with a renewed form of
abstraction based on "pure painting."
Painters such as José Manuel Broto,
Miguel Ángel Campano, Gerardo
Delgado and José María Sicilia first
presented their works at this point,
marking a new moment of euphoria
in painting along with artists such as
Luis Gordillo; figurative painters such
as Guillermo Pérez Villalta; abstract
artists such as Albert Ràfols-Casamada,
Jordi Teixidor and Soledad Sevilla;
and the visual investigations of Juan
Navarro Baldeweg and Darío Villalba.

A unique figure among Spanish
artists of the 1980s is the Majorcan
Miquel Barceló, considered by many
at that period to be the prototype
of the "young artist," although few
predicted the relevance he would
subsequently achieve both in Spain
and internationally. Barceló has
gradually consolidated his language,
which is based on a repertoire of
characteristic themes primarily
derived from nature and on a very
specific use of traditional visual
resources taken to their extremes.

Coinciding with this return
to "pure painting," the 1980s also
manifested a new and marked interest
in sculpture. Deploying very different
approaches, artists such as Sergi
Aguilar, Juan Bordes and Susana
Solano reawakened a seemingly
dormant medium, and by continuing
the direction initiated by conceptual
art installations and interventions
they succeeded in going beyond
the limits of traditional sculpture
and achieved creative maturity.